QEmu guide - Windows 10 - how to install and run it on Easy

[Federico]

The most convenient way of using an hypervisor on Linux is probably running Windows on it, since the lack of device drivers can still be considered as the achilles heel of Linux, and there still exist a plethora of sectoral software which only run on MS Windows. For all the people using dual booting (having installed Easy either on HDD-partion or external USB stick) this makes it also obviously possible to use Windows without having to reboot the physical machine every single time.

1) Needed data / preparation:

In order to install a Windows virtual machine (VM from now on) on Easy, you'll obviously first need a Windows 10 installation media. We need an ISO file containing the whole installation image. If you have a Windows 10 physical installation DVD at your disposal, it is possible to extract the corresponding image from it and save it onto an ISO file by using free software like ImgBurn (https://www.imgburn.com/) et similia. If not, you can download the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool from the Microsoft website and download the latest X86-64 build of Windows 10 through it. In this latter case, please arm yourself with patience, since the download won't work on Linux (you need to access the download page from MS Windows and obviously the program itself only runs on Windows). The way you want to go is up to you; also up to you is the version of Windows 10 which you install. Please keep in mind that the OS has been around for a while now (since July 2015) and that earlyer versions tend to be smaller in size, but obviously also less secure. Regarding the disk space needed you can calculate about 5 GB for the ISO file, but it is possible to delete it after the installation or to store it outside of Easy; and a minimum of 11 GB of space on the Easy partition for the Windows virtual HDD file are needed.
We also need another ISO file named "virtio-win-0.1.229.iso" which is about 500 MB in size and can be downloaded from here:

https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/vi ... io-win.iso

this file contains important Windows device drivers for QEmu virtual devices. Once you've finished downloading please move both files to a location accessible by Easy. Any location can be used, provided that it is accessible by Easy. In this guide we will assume that all data has been placed into /files/other .

Your CPU should support the Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD-Virtualization for AMD. So please check in the BIOS that these features are present and active (they are usually active by default).
CPUs without these features should be the vast minority nowadays.
In case you are not sure if your hardware and / or operating system kernel are overall capable of running QEmu, you can download and run the QEmu-ready package from here. Just extract it somewhere and run it and you should see something like this (if you are on Intel):

Screenshot(8).jpg (31.05 KiB) Viewed 611 times

2) Installation:

in order to run QEmu on Easy, you'll obviously need to install it. Please run PKGget and install the package "qemu-6.2.0-r5". Keep in mind that normally the package isn't installed, even if it is shown as
being installed (so click on it to install it). The old version of it (6.2.0-r4) lacks important functionalities. Therefore, if PKGget does not show the latest version, either update the repository (configure packet manager button --> update now) or just update Easy to the latest version. The package "virglrenderer-0.9.1-r3" may also be needed. Also please pay attention not to uninstall other needed packages, like libvulkan for example. Anyway, to check if the software has been installed and works correctly you can issue the command:

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qemu-system-x86_64 --help

this should show the complete list of possible options and values for the program. It is also adviceable to do the following:

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export QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=pa

this adds the environment variable "QEMU_AUDIO_DRV" with value "pa" to the system.

3) Configuration:

first of all we will have to create the file which will act as the virtual system drive for our VM. This file will grow dynamically in size. Meaning that it will be just a few kilobytes big at the beginning and will be allowed to grow on demand till the size we want to allow. I assume that 20 GB are enough. Otherwise, adjust the command as needed:

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cd /files/other

qemu-img create -f qcow2 winvirtualdisk.qcow2 20G

you can also name the qcow2 file as you wish. This is just an example. Once the file has been created and placed on the same folder where the windows ISO and virtio-win-0.1.229.iso are located, we can go on and start our VM for the first time:

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qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 4G \
-smp 2 \
-hda [virtual disk filename].qcow2 \
-boot d \
-net nic,model=virtio \
-net user \
-vga virtio \
-device ich9-intel-hda,id=sound0 \
-device hda-duplex,id=sound0-codec0,bus=sound0.0,cad=0 \
-audiodev pa,id=hda,server=[pulse audio server string] \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1 \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s4=1 \
-cdrom [Windows 10 ISO filename].ISO

let's comment this long command as far as possible:

qemu-system-x86_64 --> we are emulating an x86_64 machine.

-enable-kvm --> this enables the kvm accelerator (https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page).

-m 4G --> we assign 4 GB of RAM memory to this VM. We have tested that Windows 10 does not run well enough when it's only given 2 GB of RAM. Hence, it is unfortunately not adviceable to do this on PCs which only have 4 Gigs, since one should never assign more than 50% of the available physical memory to a VM generally speaking.

-smp 2 --> with this we say to QEmu that we want to emulate an x86_64 CPU, with 2 threads.

-boot d --> with this we say to QEmu that we want to start the system from the virtual DVD-ROM drive, and not from the virtual HDD.

-net nic,model=virtio --> we want to emulate a "virtio" network card. That's because we (should) already have the needed drivers for it.

-vga virtio --> we want to emulate a "virtio" video card. That's because we (should) already have the needed drivers for it.

-device ich9-intel-hda,id=sound0
-device hda-duplex,id=sound0-codec0,bus=sound0.0,cad=0
-audiodev pa,id=hda,server=[pulse audio server string]
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s4=1

all these 5 lines are just needed to configure the virtual audio card in such a way that it can be digested and used by Windows 10.
The pulse audio server string can be retrieved by issueing the command:

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pactl info

it should be /run/pulse/native --> (but I cannot be sure that it's identical on every version of Easy)

-cdrom [Windows 10 ISO filename].ISO --> we just say that the Windows 10 ISO image file we just downloaded should act as a physical DVD which is inserted into our virtual DVD-ROM drive.

Now theoretically the VM should be running and you should be going through the usual Windows 10 installation process. It's up to you if you want to add a license Key to your new system. If you don't have any, you can obviously just click on the link I don't have a produkt key to skip the process.

When the installation procedure finishes, Windows 10 should boot with standard drivers. Audio should already work and internet also. Please don't worry if the image quality isn't that good at the moment. Just power-off the system. Now the virtual HDD file should have grown in size till about 11 GBs. You can start your Windows 10 VM again by issueing (and re-issueing when needed) the command:

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qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 4G \
-smp 2 \
-hda [virtual disk filename].qcow2 \
-net nic,model=virtio \
-net user \
-vga virtio \
-device ich9-intel-hda,id=sound0 \
-device hda-duplex,id=sound0-codec0,bus=sound0.0,cad=0 \
-audiodev pa,id=hda,server=[pulse audio server string] \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1 \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s4=1 

you can direct your input back to the host with the key combination Ctrl + Alt + G

4) Finishing touches:

Video and network drivers:

For adding correct video and network drivers, we will have to use the second iso file containing drivers, which you should have downloaded at the beginning of this article.
QEmu should be started in the following way:

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qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 4G \
-smp 2 \
-hda [virtual disk filename].qcow2 \
-net nic,model=virtio \
-net user \
-vga virtio \
-device ich9-intel-hda,id=sound0 \
-device hda-duplex,id=sound0-codec0,bus=sound0.0,cad=0 \
-audiodev pa,id=hda,server=[pulse audio server string] \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1 \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s4=1 \
-cdrom virtio-win-0.1.229.iso

when the system boots up you should find on Explorer a disk inserted into the virtual DVD-Rom drive. This disk contains all the drivers for any virtual QEmu device. So there will be many folders and 2 executables on it. Execute the 64 bit executable in order to run the software. If you follow the wizard, it should install automatically all the needed drivers, as well as create the C:\Program Files\Virtio-Win folder, containing all the virtio drivers for your system. If the automatic Wizard doesn't work for any reason, the correct driver for the network card is inside C:\Program Files\Virtio-Win\Network ; and the one for the video-card inside C:\Program Files\Virtio-Win\Viogpudo . After installing these drivers the video quality should be much better and also Internet surfing should be much faster (as fast as on the host).

Screenshot(10).png (245.29 KiB) Viewed 2613 times

After you've done this, there will be no more need to execute QEmu with the option -cdrom virtio-win-0.1.229.iso . The line can be removed.

Connecting USB devices from the host to the guest:

It is possible to passthrough to the guest any USB device connected to the host. There are several ways to do that. First of all the lsusb command should be issued:

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lsusb

Screenshot(9).png (67.01 KiB) Viewed 2613 times

the output of the lsusb command shows every device connected to the host. Every device is connected to a particular USB bus and is allocated to a particular bus address. More over, every device has a particular vendorid and a particular productid. The vendorid is represented by the 4 digits before the colon, whilst the productid is represented by the 4 digits after the colon.
Now: if the VM is not running we can add lines like these to the QEmu startup command:

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[code]-device usb-host,hostbus=3,hostaddr=3[/code]

or:

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[code]-device usb-host,vendorid=0x6ade,productid=0x9582[/code]

so that the VM starts with the needed device(s) already attached. If using lines like the first one, for the same USB device the needed command may change every time the device is physically connected to the host. This is due to the fact that USB devices are dynamically allocated to buses and addresses. Therefore, it is better to use vendor and product ids, like in the second line, so that the command never chnges for a given device.

It is even possible to passthrough USB devices on the fly, when the virtual machine is already runnning. To do that, just select the QEmu window and type the key-combination Ctrl + Alt + 2 . This should call the QEmu console, which is called Monitor. Here it is possible to directly type commands for interacting with the VM.

To connect a USB device, of which you know bus number and address, just type, for example:

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[code]device_add usb-host,hostbus=2,hostaddr=3[/code] 

and hit Enter.

To connect a USB device, of which you know vendor and product IDs, just type for example:

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[code]device_add usb-host,vendorid=0x6ade,productid=0x9582[/code]

and hit Enter.

Sharing a folder with the host:

This is also doable in a relatively easy way. Please notice that there will be anyway no network connection between host and guest. Only the desired folder will be shared.
First of all we need to create a samba share on our Easy host. To do that select Menu --> Network and launch EasyShare. Please if you havn't already done so, click the Samba Setup button and setup the Samba daemon correctly. The writing under the Samba Setup button should be green and should say that the Samba daemon is running. Now in the Samba Setup section it is possible to setup network shares with paths and share names; please share at least one folder. Inside the lower Shared local folders section the shared folder should appear. It's absolutely up to you which folder to share. Notice that this folder will also be accessible by any other PC connected to your own network.

When you are ready, you should start QEmu with the following command:

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qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 4G \
-smp 2 \
-hda [virtual disk filename].qcow2 \
-net nic,model=virtio \
-net user,smb=[absolute path to the smb share] \
-vga virtio \
-device ich9-intel-hda,id=sound0 \
-device hda-duplex,id=sound0-codec0,bus=sound0.0,cad=0 \
-audiodev pa,id=hda,server=[pulse audio server string] \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s3=1 \
-global ICH9-LPC.disable_s4=1

please pay attention to the fact that the [absolute path to the smb share] is not the Samba share name, but just the absolute path to the shared folder.
For example: if you have shared the folder /files/other/qemushare with name qemushare, you will have to use the following line:

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	[code]-net user,smb=/files/other/qemushare[/code]

regardless of the fact that other PCs connected to your network may access your share just by going to the path \\[your IP address]\qemushare .

When the VM boots up, just open up Windows Explorer and on the menu bar click on "Computer" and then on the button labeled connect network drive. Inside the resulting dialogue window, just choose a drive letter and type the following inside the Folder field:

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[code]\\10.0.2.4\qemu[/code]

Hit the finish button and you should be already good to go. You will directly find the shared folder everytime you open up Windows Explorer.

Making easyer to start the VM:

This is obvious. I just add this for completeness. To launch the VM easyer one can create a shell script and place it anywhere, containg the launch command. On the -hda line it is also possible to specify the absolute path to the virtual HDD file, so that the VM can be launched from anywhere. Once this shell script exists somewhere, one can place a new link on the desktop calling it.
Inside the breeze and breeze-dark icon themes even Windows icons can be found, for example image-vnd.microsoft.icon.svg .

Retrieving free space from the virtual drive file:

As already explained, the virtual drive file will grow on demand till the maximum allowed size. If for any reason the space occupation gets smaller on the virtual drive, the file will not be shrinked accordingly.
The procedure to manually shrink the file and retrieve the free space on the host is as follows:

• launch the VM, go to this website, download the tool Sdelete and extract the zip file contents somewhere.

• with an elevated shell go to the location where you extracted the files and execute:

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sdelete64 -z

• accept the license conditions and wait till the operation finishes.

• power off the VM.

• on the host cd to the folder where the drive file is located:

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cd /files/other

• create a new shrinked drive file:

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qemu-img convert -O qcow2 winvirtualdisk.qcow2 new_winvirtualdisk.qcow2

In this way a new image file will be created and it will be as small as possible for containing the given VM. Please pay attention to the fact that the host file system must have enough free space for containing the new VM drive file. When the process finishes, the old file may be deleted and the new one renamed as needed.

[pamojja]

Thank you for these detailed instructions, will have to read repeatedly again to understand better. I'm absolutely new to Linux. Therefore, excuse my naive questions. I guess it will work just as well with windows11? Don't know if I understand this right, but if one's files are encrypted at first start up, don't also get VMs get encrypted each time they are saved with shut-down? And doesn't that not cause too much time needed for shut-downs? Shouldn't it work therefore much faster with encryption disabled?

[pamojja]

Now theoretically the VM should be running and you should be going through the usual Windows 10 installation process. It's up to you if you want to add a license Key to your new system. If you don't have any, you can obviously just click on the link I don't have a produkt key to skip the process.

Tried your installation with a Windows 11 ISO. Unfortunately, the installation gets stuck, because allegedly not fulfilling the hardware requirements.

Would it need a different version of virtio-win-0.1.229.iso?

[pamojja]

On an other forum got this help:

i know there are some differences, but with virt-manager i had to have a package called ovmf installed to start using uefi. can you try searching for it in the package manager?

Description: UEFI firmware for 64-bit x86 virtual machines
Open virtual Machine Firmware is a build of EDK II for 64-bit x86 virtual machines. It includes full support for UEFI, including Secure Boot, allowing use of UEFI in place of a traditional BIOS in your VM.

Isn't found in the EasyOS PKg. How would one install ovmf - or something similiar - from somewhere else?

The reason I'm so keen on getting Windows 11 installed as VM; it's much cleaner than previous, works as expected without having to sign up to any Microsoft cloud services, and I always avoided the slowing down of the system by too many installations, by using portable apps almost exclusively. In 20 years never seen a virus or malware.

With EasyOS so many things work differently, or only after a couple of saving sessions and restarts. But to become accustomed to EasyOS one has to use it! Most of the time not possible because simple lack of time with so many unexpected failures. And therefore having to boot into Windows 11 anyway again, If that wouldn't be the case, I could use EasyOS most of the time, and get accustomed much faster. And thereby using Windows less and less.

Please help.

[pamojja]

Most of the time not possible because simple lack of time with so many unexpected failures.

Just as examples, after restart and saving session, and having followed the instructions here to the letter, if I use the run command above now in the terminal, it replys: qemu-system-x86_64: -hda winvirtualdisk.qcow2: Could not open 'winvirtualdisk.qcow2': No such file or directory - though it clearly still is there and worked yesterday just fine.

Having allowed 30GB to the qcow.2, since that is about what my virgin Windows 11 weighted, and probably still not enough, I tried to delete 7 Linux VMs I tried in Aqemu first, all failing to install. But obviously taking a lot of space, growing the easyos folder on the ext4 partition to 17GB. After deleting 6 Linux VMs and their isos, the occupied space by easyos is still 16,5GB? So I checked the trash icon on the desktop, if the deleted ISOs could be found there. But wasn't. Then what for the trash icon is even there for?

After a third safe session and second restart, the easyos installation is still 15.1GB, despite having long deleted about 8GB of Linux distro ISOs?

[pamojja]

The configuration command-line, compared to the run command-line ist different in one line:

-boot d --> with this we say to QEmu that we want to start the system from the virtual DVD-ROM drive, and not from the virtual HDD.

Is it intentionally omitted in the run command?

[Federico]

Thank you for these detailed instructions, will have to read repeatedly again to understand better. I'm absolutely new to Linux. Therefore, excuse my naive questions. I guess it will work just as well with windows11? Don't know if I understand this right, but if one's files are encrypted at first start up, don't also get VMs get encrypted each time they are saved with shut-down? And doesn't that not cause too much time needed for shut-downs? Shouldn't it work therefore much faster with encryption disabled?

Hi, I'm just an engineer, I'm obviously not the author of QEmu. I cannot tell you if the VMs get encrypted when they are shut down but I don't think so (and I cannot tell you right now if there's any option for that within the software). Anyway, start up and shut down times are good enough, at least let's say more than acceptable on average hardware.

[Federico]

Now theoretically the VM should be running and you should be going through the usual Windows 10 installation process. It's up to you if you want to add a license Key to your new system. If you don't have any, you can obviously just click on the link I don't have a produkt key to skip the process.

Tried your installation with a Windows 11 ISO. Unfortunately, the installation gets stuck, because allegedly not fulfilling the hardware requirements.

Would it need a different version of virtio-win-0.1.229.iso?

Hi, Windows 11 is of course the first thing I tried. As I obviously know that it is jet more widely used than Win 10 nowadays (although I can't see many important Win 11-features which Windows 10 doesn't already have).
The point of the question is that Windows 11 has more severe hardware requirements, which are quite more difficult to emulate. That is: Windows 11 requires a TPM 2.0 (Thrusted Platform Module) capable motherboard to run.
Now: there are even TPM emulators around and I tried to setup one at first, but I wasn't successfull, mainly because they are only available as source code and at the time when I wrote this guide there still was no possibility to compile stuff on EasyOS.
Now that this possibility has been added, i do not exclude that this could be done (and possibly extend this guide also to Windows 11).

Yes but, a good point would be to make a survey and clarify first which features of Windows 11 people need, which aren't already available on Windows 10.

I will have a look (but I do not promise anything).

[Federico]

The configuration command-line, compared to the run command-line ist different in one line:

-boot d --> with this we say to QEmu that we want to start the system from the virtual DVD-ROM drive, and not from the virtual HDD.

Is it intentionally omitted in the run command?

Of course. Exactly like on a real PC, we don't need to boot from the DVD-Rom drive any more after the installation has been successfully executed.

[vtpup]

Thanks for this tutorial.

I'm attempting to try a creating a Windows 7 Home 64 SP1 in a container, in a thumbdrive (64gb) system using my Win 7 ISO file per above.

The Acer laptop (model in sig below) has an existing DVD optical drive. When I try to run the starting command I get this error:

qemu-system-x86_64: -cdrom: drive with bus=0, unit=0 (index=0) exists

I'm assuming that's because of the existing drive?

What would the alternative wording be to start using the ISO file?

[vtpup]

As an alternative I tried setting up a new VM using Aqemo. I added the Win7-64 ISO file as an optical drive. I got the following error message

Error #1
Could not access KVM kernel module: No such file or directory qemu-system-x86_64: failed to initialize kvm: No such file or directory

[rockedge]

@vtpup sounds like the kernel module is not loaded.

in a terminal try:

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modprobe kvm
modprobe kvm-intel

if they work there will be no output. Now try QEMU again.

if there is an error loading the kernel does not support KVM

[vtpup]

Thanks Rockedge, that worked! Win 7 installer is now starting up. Main difficulty now is the cursor just moves in one direction so I can't use a mouse (or trackpad). I'm trying the install using Alt/key commands, hoping somewhere there will be a mouse wizard or something.

[vtpup]

Mouse cursor problem was solved by adding the line:

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usb-device tablet

Unfortunately, Aqemu does not have a means of doing this.

I generated a shell script from aqemu and then altered that.

Win7 installer worked under aquemu , btw, like the Win 10 success.

[rockedge]

@vtpup You are setting up Windows 7 with AQEMU you can try to alter the mouse - tablet settings to allow the virtual machine to deal with these devices. This helps the double mouse cursor and tracking with Puppy Linux QEMU machines. I use it in Windows VM's.
Notice the highlighted section of the QEMU parameters in the Advanced tab.

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-usb -usbdevice tablet

Screenshot(23).jpg (58.79 KiB) Viewed 990 times

add the parameter configuration to your AQEMU Windows 7 configuration panels. VM tab -> Advanced button -> Custom QEMU Command Line Arguments

[vtpup]

Ah, excelent Rockedge! Missed that.

[Clarity]

@vtpup and @rockedge This package from @norgo is highly recommended for ALL current (until forum package manager start including it in forum distro builds).

It addresses the missing module issue as well as alerts if other factors are not present for QEMU ideal use to achieve 99% PC performance

That package, "qemu_ready" is found on the forum, here.

@Federico you may want to include this addition in your instructions. Its tiny, simple, addresses KVM (that almost every 64bit PC since 2009 has virtualization in its hardware), and will alert if other platform needs exist for ideal QEMU operations. For your instructions, its a mere one-setp instruction ... probable 1 sentence.

Hope this info is helpful here and for all VM users of EASY.

[dancytron]

What kind of hardware do you need to make this fast enough to be usable?

[Clarity]

@dancytron please show the results of "qemu_ready". If you dont have it installed, install and run it. Please post results.

[Federico]

What kind of hardware do you need to make this fast enough to be usable?

I would say that:

• if using a cheap but modern laptop, it will run slow but not slow enough to be considered unusable.
• if using an average powered modern laptop, it will run astonishingly well, so well that one may forget to be using a virtual machine.
• if using a very powerful modern laptop, VMs will be basically undistinguishable from physical machines.

One thing to note is that QEmu relies more on CPU and RAM than the video chip. Very important is obviously the support for the Intel Virtualization Technology and the equivalent AMD-Virtualization which is provided by the KVM kernel module. So one should obviously check if the own CPU supports these features and eventually check that they are active on the bios settings.

[Clarity]

@Federico I provided a 'better' solution for you to include as it make it simple for users to know KVM presence. It was created by @norgo, a Puppy Linux contributor.

Questions

• Did you see my prior post of this thread from Thu Feb 29, 2024 5:36 pm?

• Have you tested for your own purpose?

• Can you report if meaningful or useful?

Share reason(s) you have on that, please.

[vtpup]

Everybody who has read this thread saw your post, Clarity.

Federico did not say anything that contradicted it.